In commercial lighting applications, particularly to illuminate products in display cases, and many direct and indirect lighting applications such as under-shelf lighting or cove lighting, a series of festoon style bulbs are arranged in a linear or arcuate array with respect to one another. The advantage provided by the linear array of festoon style bulbs is that the pattern of illumination provided is spread out in a substantially uniform manner over a predetermined distance.
As shown in FIG. 1, prior art incandescent festoon style bulbs 101 have a central elongated translucent tube with electrically conductive caps or wire loops located on either end. Strung between the electrically conductive caps or wire loops is an elongated filament which produces light when the caps or wire loops are connected to a source of electrical power. One of the drawbacks of festoon style bulbs is their service life. Because replacing festoon style bulbs incurs maintenance costs there is a need in the art to reduce the maintenance cost of replacing festoon style bulbs with a source of light having a longer service life.
One of the alternative sources of light having a longer service life which has recently become available is the light emitting diode or LED. LED's have a longer service life and use less electrical power than prior art festoon style bulbs. To make LED's more usable as sources of light, several companies have developed a set of electrical componentry which is combinable with one or more LEDs and will transform the characteristics of existing available electrical power into electrical power useable by the one or more LEDs to emit light energy. However, there has been no system and method for mounting the combination of the one or more LEDs together with the electrical componentry into a commonly used AC powered light fixture.